y, it is
less than it might have been, if it had not been for the terrible and
often wanton destruction of MSS. which has bereft us, in Scotland
especially, of some of the richest treasures the Celtic genius
has produced. It is only needed to instance the tailor who was
found cutting up an ancient MS. for patterns, to show how almost
inconceivably wholesale the havoc thus done has been in the last
six centuries.

Some of the most interesting and valuable of the Scottish
contributions to Gaelic literature are in what we may call ballad
form. Such is the tragic tale of 'Deirdre,' in the Glen-mason MS.
(thirteenth century), which is preserved in the Advocates' Library,
Edinburgh. Others again are versions of poems correspondent to those
given, for instance, in the 'Book of the Dean of Lismore.' Of this
heroic poetry much would have been lost if it had not been for the
zeal of collectors, who for the last five centuries have been
collecting in old MSS. or from the mouths of the Highlanders the
ballads and tales of old time. "The last and greatest of the ballad
and tale collectors," says Mr. MacNeill, "was Mr. Campbell, who in
1859-60 traversed the whole Gaelic area; and assisted by intelligent
Highlanders formed large collections, of which he has given a
considerable quantity to the world in his four volumes of tales. All
these are genuine productions." We may quote further what the same
writer says of the uncertain chronology of these ballads:--"They may
have been composed centuries before they were committed to writing.
We have fragments, such as the Glen-mason MS., written as early as the
twelfth century, in the hand and language common to the learned in
both Albin and Erin at the time. The 'Book of the Dean of Lismore,'
however, is written phonetically to represent the spoken language of
his day, and is mainly in the Perthshire dialect." Cuculain and many
other of the heroes that we mentioned in our Irish article reappear in
these ballads; and in them the Feinne fight out their ancient battles
to the bitter end. A new and rather different coloring is lent, too,
to the Scottish ballads by the Norse element, and the constant wars in
which the Vikings and the Gaels encountered time after time lend some
of their finest episodes to this poetry.

If we turn from the ballads to the prose tales and romances, we find
the same strong resemblances and the same significant differences. The
Irish have always the more fluent and e